Travel expense automation

ABSTRACT

A method of monitoring the expenses of a traveller during the progress of an itinerary utilises NFC for carrying out the financial transactions associated with the itinerary and updates a corporate ERP or similar financial database with the financial transactions as they occur allowing rapid allocation to cost centres. The itinerary may be laid out in terms of itinerary events, each of which may be tracked by an NFC connection with an NFC device at an expected location and date for the itinerary event.

CROSS REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS

This application is a division of application Ser. No. 14/166,416 filed on Jan. 28, 2014, which is a continuation of PCT/NZ2012/000134 filed on Aug. 2, 2012, which claims foreign priority to New Zealand Application No. 594388 filed on Aug. 3, 2011. The entire contents of each of the above applications are hereby incorporated by reference.

TECHNICAL FIELD

The invention generally relates to the automation of the handling of the expenses of a traveller within an ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) system.

More particularly the invention relates to the association of the itinerary of a traveller as lodged in an ERP system with the acceptance of expenses at appropriate times.

BACKGROUND ART

ERP systems manage the resources of an organisation, from the financial through personnel, project management, manufacturing, sales, service, customer relations management systems, document management, itinerary planning and such various other functions as the enterprise requires.

An ERP system typically is made up of a transactional database with software modules to handle one or more of the functions required. Interaction with the modules is typically by a web interface and the database and modules may be part of a cloud computing system.

The present invention is intended to deal with the situation in which an enterprise employee, manager or director is remote from the enterprise base. In such a situation the person has expenses which are paid by and should be recorded by the enterprise. This may prove difficult, requiring the collecting of receipts by the person concerned and the subsequent recording of these in the ERP system.

The use of credit cards reduces the problems to some extent but the recorded transaction may not reflect what is actually happening and typically requires reconciliation after the travel is completed.

Various efforts have been made to resolve some of the problems associated with recording expenses for a remote traveller. Among these are:

Patent application US20110119179 relates to processing payment transactions between enterprise resource planning systems and particularly relates to the conversion of the invoice format between the two systems.

Patent application US 2003/0046104 relates to a method for the approval of expense applications in which the expense is automatically approved if it falls within specified parameters.

U.S. Pat. No. 7,865,411 relates to an accounts payable process in which details from an invoice are matched against a purchase order.

U.S. Pat. No. 7,957,718 relates to a method and apparatus for telecommunication expense management which provides a pop-up query when a call is completed in order to allocate the expense of the call.

Patent application US 2007/0083401 relates to travel and expense management. The specification describes a travel approval system centrally storing travel data and integrated with the travelling users.

Patent application US 2005/0015316 A1 Methods for calendaring, tracking, and expense reporting, and devices and devices and systems employing same (abandoned 2008). The specification describes a system which stores an itinerary, tracks the traveller along points on the itinerary both physically and by time and automatically assigns expenses to appointments on that itinerary. The system is traveller centric but has an enterprise centralised computer system.

Such systems leave unanswered the question as to how the system ensures that the costs recorded are correct and how to reduce to a minimum the travellers interaction with payment systems during travel.

Also well known is the NFC (Near Field Communication) communications protocol which uses the NDEF protocol for the two way transfer of data between two devices by RFID tag transmissions. The protocol works by induction when two such devices are within a short distance of each other, typically 4 cm to 20 cm, and automatically establishes a connection between them.

It is known that the NFC system may be used for contactless payment systems, see for instance U.S. Pat. No. 8,215,546.

There remains the problem of ensuring that the ERP system correctly records and allocates the expenses of a remote traveller.

The present invention provides a solution to this and other problems which offers advantages over the prior art or which will at least provide the public with a useful choice.

All references, including any patents or patent applications cited in this specification are hereby incorporated by reference. No admission is made that any reference constitutes prior art. The discussion of the references states what their authors assert, and the applicants reserve the right to challenge the accuracy and pertinency of the cited documents. It will be clearly understood that, although a number of prior art publications are referred to herein, this reference does not constitute an admission that any of these documents form part of the common general knowledge in the art, in New Zealand or in any other country.

A reference to an “NFC” equipped device refers to a device which can communicate using a Near Field Communication protocol.

A reference to an “ERP” is a reference to an Enterprise Resource Planning system including at least an accounting system and a corporate travel planning system including itinerary planning and expenditure capability.

A reference herein to an itinerary “event” is a reference to a point at which there is a notable occurrence in the itinerary of a traveller. Such events may include points in space and time at which: a mode of transport changes (from aircraft to foot, from foot to taxi, from taxi to foot, from foot to rail); at which a payment is received, made or committed to (porters tip, meal expenditure, taxi charge, check out); at which a specific communication is received or made (aircraft gate check-in, phone initiated parking charge) or other occurrences which have relevance to the incurring of debt or the receiving of income as recorded in an ERP system.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

In one exemplification the invention consists in a method of carrying out a financial transaction with a first NFC equipped device using a second device associated with a traveller which device is NFC equipped and has internet access, the second device receiving from or supplying to the first NFC device an invoice or receipt relating to one or more items, authorising a payment to or receiving a payment authorisation from the first device, thereby initiating a financial transaction, conveying from the second device to a remote ERP system information relating to the financial transaction, the remote ERP including the capability to allocate costs and payments against cost centres and having an itinerary for the traveller carrying the second device, the itinerary having one or more itinerary events in the itinerary, characterised in that at the remote ERP system the financial transaction is allocated against an itinerary event stored in the ERP system and the items of the financial transaction are allocated against cost centres in the ERP system.

Preferably the second device carries a replicate of the itinerary and itinerary events.

Preferably the itinerary events are identifiable events occurring during the progress of the itinerary and preferably at least some of the itinerary events are predicted to occur within a specific time frame.

Preferably the itinerary may be amended at the remote ERP system and replicated in the second device.

Preferably the second device has sufficient itinerary details to query expected item cost centres with the traveller.

Preferably the second device may allocate items to unexpected cost centres.

In a second embodiment the invention may consist in a system for the initiating of a financial transaction by a traveller travelling on an itinerary which itinerary has itinerary events,

-   -   the traveller travelling with a first device which is NFC         equipped and remote communication capable and capable of         initiating financial transactions with a second NFC equipped         device;     -   the first device interacting with a second NFC equipped device         to carry out a financial transaction related to an itinerary         event and to receive an invoice or receipt relating to items         within that financial transaction;     -   a remote ERP system storing the traveller itinerary and the         expected itinerary events;     -   the first device communicating with the remote ERP system upon         completion of the transaction with information including details         of the transaction and including the items within that         transaction;     -   characterised in the remote ERP system allocating the financial         transaction against an itinerary event and allocating the items         against cost centres in the ERP system.

These and other features of as well as advantages which characterise the present invention will be apparent upon reading of the following detailed description and review of the associated drawings.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

FIG. 1 is a general illustrative view of the technology involved in the invention.

FIGS. 2 to 7 show drawing depicting the screen of a travellers mobile phone at various stages of the inventive process.

FIG. 8 is a flow diagram of one version of the flow process of the invention.

DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

Referring now to FIG. 1 the inventive system predicates a traveller carried device which interacts with a remote ERP so that the combined system:

-   1) records in the travellers corporate ERP the travellers itinerary,     and replicates a copy to the traveller carried device; -   2) matches any change of the itinerary location to a one or more     itinerary events occurring at specified times and places; -   3) queries the itinerary event supplier or is queried by the     itinerary event supplier for the required payment; -   4) optionally queries the traveller for expense approval or     authorisation; -   5) initiates any approved financial transaction; -   6) notifies the remote ERP of the expenditure or payment for the     itinerary event as soon as this is possible; -   7) notifies the remote ERP of the cost centres for the itinerary     event.

FIG. 1 shows the travellers NFC equipped device 101, typically a mobile phone, its internet connection 102 to a remote ERP system 103 which holds the original of the travellers itinerary, its local connections to payment initiating NFC devices at a hotel 104, a taxi 105 or an airport 106 using the NFC NDEF protocol. Most itinerary items will have itinerary events associated with them, for instance an airport flight may have an associated entry in to a taxi, and exit from the taxi plus payment, a flight check in assuming there is baggage and a gate check in. Preferably each of these locations has an NFC identifying device which can serve to identify the traveller through the travellers NFC equipped device, and preferably where a financial transaction takes place at that location the NFC device can initiate a financial transaction with the travellers device if required.

Each of these locations occurs at a known itinerary event in the travellers itinerary and reporting back of these assists the corporate ERP in tracking the progress of the traveller and, by reporting back payments, recording the expenses of the traveller. The presence of the travellers device at a location can be estimated from location services using the location of found WiFi network names or phone cell locations or from a device GPS and failing this by the traveller manually activating an itinerary event.

The travellers phone may communicate with the remote ERP system via the internet or via any other available communication method when and where possible and the travellers itinerary may update the ERP system and be updated from the remote ERP system in this manner so that it carries a replica of the ERP itinerary. Typically the travellers phone will communicate with the ERP via WiFi rather than a telephone data link when outside of the home country in the interests of cost, and typically the WiFi connection will be only at selected locations.

The travellers device detects the occurrence of an itinerary event, for instance the passage of the phone past a checkout NFC device at a hotel at or near the time specified in the itinerary for checkout will be interpreted as an itinerary event for checkout, and retrieves from the checkout facility via NFC the expenditure incurred at the hotel. The traveller may authorise this for payment by NFC and the payment can then later be reported back to the remote ERP by a report conveyed from the travellers phone of the itemised invoice/receipt provided to the traveller by NFC.

In similar manner the traveller may take a taxi from the hotel to an airport. The taxi preferably has an identified transaction triggering NFC device and on leaving the taxi the device is queried, using the travellers device, for the required fare. Once the traveller authorises that fare a financial transaction will occur and again the transaction can be later reported through a WiFi connection or the travellers data connection to the corporate ERP.

FIG. 2 shows a display on an NFC equipped mobile phone 201 having control buttons 202, 203 and screen icons 204, 205 when the phone is passed by an NFC terminal in a hotel at a date and time which falls near to the expected check out time as recorded as an itinerary event in both the phone and the corporate ERP database. The monitoring application in the phone questions at 206 in message 207 whether checkout is required. Response icons 208 show the allowed responses and if the “YES” icon is touched the NFC connection queries the hotel for a checkout invoice.

This checkout invoice is parsed by the NFC transaction application and processed to show as at FIG. 3 the name of the billing centre at 301, the total billed amount at 302 and the billing period at 303. The latter may be broken down to the hotel cost centre items at 304.

The phone application will have stored the predicted itinerary expenses and if this differs from the expected amount will raise a notification. This may produce a message 401 as seen in FIG. 4 on which the traveller can act before confirming the payment.

Similarly the phone application may provide for judging whether some of the expenses are corporate or personal expenses and presenting them differently to the remainder, for instance by coloration. It may also query the traveller as to whether such expenses should be assigned as to personal expenses as other than approved expenses as in FIG. 5 at 501. If this is so the payment may be split so that the corporate part of the expenses is paid with the stored corporate credit card details and the personal part paid with the travellers own credit card.

Once all such queries have been answered the appropriate financial transaction or transactions will be performed with the hotel through the NFC connection and recorded by the travellers phone, either as data or as part of an uploadable webpage. Subsequently or simultaneously, depending on WiFi access, the phone application will transfer the itemised receipt to the remote ERP system together with details of the cost centres (corporate/personal, meals, accommodation, entertainment, etc).

Having checked out of the hotel the traveller may wish to take a taxi to the airport and hails a cab from outside the hotel. En route the traveller selects the cost centre menu 601 of FIG. 6 and selects the transportation “Taxi”. When the taxi arrives at the destination it is only necessary to pass the phone past the taxi NFC device and the invoice for the trip will be presented as at FIG. 7. Typically the organization name appears at 701, the currency type at 702, the details of the completed trip at 703 and the item detail at 704 with a total at 705. A confirmation touch on the screen will carry out the financial transaction leaving the travellers phone with transaction receipt details which will later be passed on to the remote ERP.

FIG. 8 shows a flowsheet of the phone and ERP process involved in carrying out the NFC connection and the transfer of data to the remote ERP. The left column relates to actions within the phone application of the traveller at 801 while the right column relates to actions at the remote ERP 802. Initially the phone NFC device contacts at 803 another NFC device with which it can exchange data, preferably receiving an indication of the organisation providing the NFC device.

At 804 the application determines whether the NFC connection matches one of the itinerary events as to date and time. Typically each event will have an event start time and an event end time within which the event is expected to fall. For instance where the traveller is leaving the hotel to take an airline flight the end time will be the minimum cross town taxi time from the last possible check in time for the flight while the start time may be several hours beforehand.

Where the time matches that of an itinerary event the application will assume that the connection is correct for the event will show the event prompt at 805 asking the traveller whether to carry out the expected event, as in FIG. 2. If not affirmed the NFC application then reverts to awaiting a new connection at 807. If affirmed at 806 the application confirms that the itinerary event is taking place at 808 and if the event involves a financial transaction, as at 809, retrieves from the connection the financial information as an invoice and presents it as in FIG. 3. Whilst doing this the application will check at 810 that the amounts match those originally entered during the itinerary creation and if not raises an error as in FIG. 4 and typically allocates part of the expenses as personal and may pay these expenses using a personal account.

Where the expense of the itinerary event is small enough the mere detection of an NFC device for that itinerary event may be sufficient to allow the carrying out of the financial transaction.

The application may also check that all the items meet the cost centre amounts predicted by the itinerary for this event as in FIG. 5 and may prompt the traveller as to which cost centre amounts which have not been predicted should be allocated to.

If no other financial matters are raised the transaction or transactions are confirmed at 811 and takes place through the NFC connection. Following this the application checks at 812 if a connection to the remote ERP is available and if so provides an update of the receipt by internet data connection or some other method to the remote ERP, including an itinerary event identifier. If no connection is available the application returns to awaiting an NFC connection and also awaits an opportunistic connection to the remote ERP. The update is eventually received at 814, the itinerary identified at 815 and the traveller concerned at 816. The occurrence of the itinerary event is then logged at 817. If the itinerary event was a financial event then the event is identified at 819 and the expected expense items retrieved from storage. At 820 the received update, whether invoice or receipt, is parsed to extract the items and the cost centres checked, noting that these should already have been allocated by the traveller as in FIG. 5 in the phone application. Where necessary any required amendments may be queried with the traveller and the recording of the itinerary event is then ended at 823. Typically any discrepancies between the itinerary at the ERP and the replica at the travellers device will be corrected by uploading the updated itinerary from the remote ERP the next time the application connects to the ERP.

The travellers NFC equipped device may be used for purposes other than financial transactions, for instance the travellers bags may have RFID tags, and this allows the traveller to positively identify bags during travel, for instance at airport baggage claim.

It is to be understood that even though numerous characteristics and advantages of the various embodiments of the present invention have been set forth in the foregoing description, together with details of the structure and functioning of various embodiments of the invention, this disclosure is illustrative only, and changes may be made in detail so long as the functioning of the invention is not adversely affected. For example the invention is described in its application to an itinerary in which only expenses may be involved, but the invention is equally as applicable to an itinerary including the selling of items and may produce invoices for transfer to a participating NFC connection and receive an authorisation to transfer funds from that NFCs organisation. The invention may thus vary dependent on the particular application for which it is used without variation in the spirit and scope of the present invention.

In addition, although the preferred embodiments described herein are directed to the recording of itinerary events and their associated transactions in an ERP system, but it will be appreciated by those skilled in the art that variations and modifications are possible within the scope of the appended claims.

INDUSTRIAL APPLICABILITY

The method of the invention is used in the transfer and corellation of data between an invoice or receipt receiving device travelling on an itinerary and a corporate ERP system recording details of the itinerary, the transferred data relating to itinerary events and being recorded as financial transactions against cost centres in the ERP. The present invention is therefore industrially applicable. 

The invention claimed is:
 1. A portable electronic device carryable by a traveler, comprising: a processor; an interactive user interface device; data storage, having stored therein: programming code that operates the portable electronic device upon execution by the processor, and a copy of an itinerary of the traveler held in a remote ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning system), the copy of the itinerary containing itinerary events, predicted itinerary expenses of itinerary events and expense cost centers for itinerary events, the portable electronic device being operationally configured to monitor itinerary events in the copy of the traveler's itinerary; a data communications interface that communicates with the remote ERP; and a NFC (Near Field Communication) interface configured to detect the presence of a payment initiating NFC device when the portable electronic device is at or near a location specified for an itinerary event at or near a specified time of that itinerary event, wherein, during operational execution of the programming code, the portable electronic device: connects, via the NFC interface, to a detected payment initiating NFC device to initiate a transaction for the predicted itinerary expense, receives information from the detected payment initiating NFC device relating to the actual itinerary transaction amount; if the actual itinerary transaction amount substantially matches the predicted itinerary expense, the portable electronic device allocates the actual itinerary transaction amount to a cost center specified for that itinerary event; if the actual itinerary transaction amount does not substantially match the predicted itinerary expense, the portable electronic device queries the traveler, via the interactive user interface device, to confirm an actual itinerary expense and cost center for the itinerary event; receives, via the interactive user interface device, a confirmation of the actual itinerary expense and cost center for the itinerary event; thereupon authorizes ; via the NFC interface, the transaction with the detected payment initiating NFC device; and transmits, via the data communications interface, details of the actual itinerary transaction amount and the allocated cost center to the remote ERP storing the traveler's itinerary.
 2. The portable electronic device as claimed in claim 1, wherein, where the actual itinerary amount does not substantially match the predicted itinerary expense, the portable electronic device queries the traveler, via the interactive user interface device, for the cost center for any amount which was not predicted.
 3. The portable electronic device as claimed in claim 1, wherein the interactive user interface device generates an interface with which the traveler manually controls activation of an itinerary event to allow the detection of an NFC device.
 4. A method of confirming the cost of an itinerary event of a traveler carried out by a portable electronic NFC (Near Field Communication) equipped device, the NFC-equipped device including a processor device and onboard data storage storing program code that operates the processor device of the NFC-equipped device and a copy of an itinerary of the traveler held by a remote ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning system), the itinerary having itinerary events, predicted itinerary expenses and expense cost centers, the program code being configured operationally cause the NFC-equipped device to monitor itinerary events and to detect, via a NFC interface connected to the processor device, the presence of a payment initiating NFC device when the NFC-equipped device is at or near the location specified for an itinerary event at or near the specified time of that itinerary event wherein the NFC-equipped device, the method comprising: connecting, via the NFC interface, to a detected payment initiating NFC device to initiate a transaction for the predicted itinerary expense; receiving, via the NFC interface, information from the detected payment initiating NFC device relating to an actual itinerary transaction amount; in the event that the actual itinerary transaction amount substantially matches the predicted itinerary expense, allocating the actual itinerary transaction amount to a cost center specified for that itinerary event; in the event that the actual itinerary transaction amount does not match the predicted itinerary expense, querying the traveler, via an interactive user interface device, to confirm the actual itinerary expense and cost center for the itinerary event; receiving from the traveler, via the user interface, confirmation of the actual itinerary expense and cost center for the itinerary event; thereupon authorizing, via the NFC interface, the transaction with the detected payment initiating NFC device; and transmitting from the NFC-equipped device, via a data communications interface, details of the actual transaction amount and the allocated cost center to the remote ERP storing the traveler's itinerary.
 5. The method as claimed in claim 4, further comprising: if the actual itinerary amount does not substantially match the predicted itinerary expense, querying the traveler, via the interactive user interface device, for the cost center for any amount which was not predicted.
 6. The method as claimed in claim 4, wherein the interactive user interface device generates an interface to manually control activation of an itinerary event, and wherein, upon receiving an action from the traveler to manually activate the itinerary event, the NFC interface operates to detect for an NFC device within range of the NFC interface. 